IFAO

Since April 10th 1894, when Jacques de Morgan discovered his tomb at Dahshur, Auibrê Hor and his place in the Egyptian chronology have incited debates between egyptologists, particularly Gaston Maspero and Jacques de Morgan. This difficult question has never been the subject of a specific study – one whose concern is the presence of a seal of clay bearing the name of pharaoh Nymaêtrê found on the canopic box.

Thus, the author attempts to reduce the incertitude concerning the dating. Examining by turns the differents objets belonging to the funerary furniture of this sovereign and the texts engraved on their surfaces, in relation to scarabs in European collections engraved with the names of king Hor, he demonstrates that these can be dated from the XIIIth Dynasty or later with difficulty, and the author proposes the hypothesis of a later dating than that previously conjectured by G. Maspero and other scholars. Basing himself on iconographical, lexicographical, and architectural details belonging respectively to the furniture and the structure of the tomb itself, the author argues that this dating should be reconsidered in order that king Auibrê‘ be placed between Senusret III and Amenemhet III.

At the same time, he establishes that most of these pieces, in connection with the ka’s statue of Auibrê, play an important part in the magical and religious process securing for the king an abundance of food. The nature of the texts themselves, the place of these objects, left unmoved when J. de Morgan discovered the tomb, give us many reference points to interpret and compare them to pieces of funerary furniture of other tombs of the XIIth Dynasty. From a certain point of view, this allows us to consider that this process was common to Middle Kingdom royal sepultures, whose rarity makes the tomb of king Auibrê Hor so valuable and interesting, despite the problem of chronology.